Paper Potential

My passion for paper started in the 5th grade when I learned about origami. My love for paper dolls blossomed into an obsession with origami and the area around me everywhere I went became littered with folded shapes. Boxes and butterflies, frogs and rabbits made of any kind of paper I could get my hands on, be it loose-leaf, magazine, or pizza flyer. A whole world opened up to me in which paper was no longer a two-dimensional word delivery method in books, or the bland, lined paper I doodled on more often than I did schoolwork. Now it was a medium for creating three-dimensional structures and tiny worlds that populated my imagined stories.

As I got older, had access to more disposable income, and discovered independent art stores, my love of paper only grew. Here was a whole new world of paper and possibility to explore. A world comprised of sheets of brightly colored and printed mulberry papers, shelves of watercolor papers with the silky smooth texture of hot press, and textured cold press. Everywhere I looked there were more papers and more potential. I would buy whatever caught my eye indiscriminately, without a plan for what it would become. Later, when I would get it home I would immediately unroll it so I could admire it, running my fingertips over the varied graininess of each sheet as though, through the fibrous material, it would tell me what it wanted to be. It was like a ritual, and in this way I found myself in posession of an impressive collection. Something had to be done.

First I had to overcome my fear of ruining the paper (a fear that still occasionally seeps in whenever I lay hands on a sheet of paper I can't replace), and act. I started tentatively, only slicing small pieces off of the sheets to incorporate into something I was working on. Then, brazenly, I started to use whole sheets when I saw that what I was doing was, if not amazing, then at least satisfying. An onion skin paper so thin I was afraid the moisture from my breath or hands would melt it became the flounce of a sewn paper dress. Lokta paper, with its mulberry fibrous surface and flower petal inclusions, was decoupaged to a cardboard box. Vintage ledger paper from the 1970s I found relegated in the storage space of a former employer has been incorporated into collage pieces, greeting cards, and art pieces over and over. That paper lasted longer than the job and I still hoard a couple of reams of it.

I find myself touching all paper and delighting in it's potential. When on a trip I'll pull the in flight magazine from the seat pocket in front of me and run my fingertips over the pages, wondering if I have the time to fold each page into shapes that will turn it into a surprise for the next person to find it. I thrill at the idea of having to wrap gifts because of that exquisite moment of cocking my scissors at exactly the precise angle to make them glide through the wrapping paper without ever having to actually close or open the scissor blades. Sometimes staring at a blank sheet of paper in a journal will momentarily overwhelm me with the familiar sensation of anticipation. Most of the time it's a list, groceries, pros and cons, a phone number or idea quickly jotted down. Most of my journals have pages and pages of hastily scribbled notes that no longer make sense now that the context has been long forgotten.

I create in other ways, I sew and make jewelry but one of the best parts about creating with paper is it's ephemeral nature. I know that none of these paper pieces will stand as an artistic legacy. I have happily watched origami shapes crumple under the onslaught of chubby, sticky little fingers and lost pieces in storage to moths and water damage. Paper isn't really meant to last. In time it will crisp at the edges and eventually crumble into nothing and I'm ok with that. There's something poignant about creating things not meant to stay, like building sandcastles in the surfline. For me, paper will always be about the experience and potential.